30. Nifty

Founders: Piers Ridyard and Steven Levy
Founded: March 2012
Website: www.theniftyminidrive.com

When a hitherto-unknown company lists a new product on Kickstarter with a target of $11,000 and ends up raising $384,319 from almost 10,000 backers, it’s fair to say they are on to something. Founder Piers Ridyard came up with the idea of Nifty’s flagship Minidrive when looking for an external storage device for his Macbook that did not compromise on portability or Apple’s famed minimalist design principles.

The colourful, attractively designed device can add up to 128GB of extra space to Apple devices by slotting seamlessly into the SD card port and turning traditional notions of bulky, ugly exterior drives on their head. With 17 global distributors and 35,000 customers already (9,805 of these were generated through Minidrive’s successful Kickstarter campaign), Ridyard and co-founder Steven Levy expect the profitable company to turn over £1m this year, launch a new product and possibly seek a second round of funding; the Minidrive may be small, but it is clear Nifty has hit upon something big.